Palestinian-Australian author Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah has launched legal action against South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas for defamation.
On Wednesday, a day after Adelaide Festival officially cancelled Adelaide Writers’ Week 2026, Dr Abdel-Fattah announced she will be taking legal action against Malinauskas, claiming the South Australian Premier “made a public statement that suggested” she is an “extremist terrorist sympathiser”.
“For the past week since I was cancelled by the Adelaide Festival, the South Premiere Peter Malinauskas has made many public statements about me and my character,” Dr Abdel-Fattah wrote.
“We have never met, and he has never attempted to contact me. He knows nothing about me, beyond what he has been told by the Murdoch press and the pro-Israel lobby, which he has apparently accepted without question.”
“Yesterday, Mr Malinauskas went even further,” Dr Abdel-Fattah claimed.
“He made a public statement that suggested I am an extremist terrorist sympathiser and directly linked me to the Bondi atrocity. This was a vicious personal assault on me, a private citizen, by the highest public official in South Australia. It was defamatory and it terrified me.”
Dr Abdel-Fattah went on to say her lawyers have issued a concerns notice under the Defamation Act against Malinauskas, penning that “this is his opportunity to undo some of the harm he has inflicted and stop punching down”.
On Tuesday, Adelaide Writers’ Weekhad cancelled this year’s fest after a majority of its board members resigned and hundreds of authors and speakers boycotted the event in protest of Dr Abdel-Fattah’s removal from the program.
Dr Abdel-Fattah was axed from the line-up, with the board citing “cultural sensitivities” in the wake of the Bondi Beach terror attack and her past comments regarding Israel. In its cancellation announcement, the remaining board members apologised directly to the author.
Following the confirmation of its cancellation, Malinauskas was asked if politics played a part in Dr Abdel-Fattah’s removal from the state’s Writers’ Week during a press conference.
“Can you imagine if a far-right Zionist walked into a Sydney mosque and murdered 15 people?” the premier said, per Sydney Morning Herald.
“Can you imagine that as the premier of this state, I would actively support a far-right Zionist going to Writers’ Week and speaking hateful rhetoric towards Islamic people? Of course I wouldn’t.
“The reverse is happening in this instance, and I’m not going to support that either, and that’s a reasonable position for me to have.”
In another press conference, which took place on Wednesday — the same day Dr Abdel-Fattah announced legal action against the premier — Malinauskas said he hadn’t received the notice but assured his actions “have been founded by a desire for compassion” and “in the pursuit of decency”.
When asked if he owed Dr Abdel-Fattah an apology, he said his remarks on the matter “have come from a desire for people to treat each other civilly” and that “people will be able to judge [his] remarks for themselves”.
Image source: Getty Images.
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